Artists and scientists have worked with digital computers for overseventy years, and algorithmic practices exist for a lot longer. But inrecent years, increased computing power and decreased costs andminiaturisation of machines have created a new quantity and quality ofeveryday exposure, economic and political criticality, and with it awave of public attention and discourse. As artists-researchers, how dowe incorporate this new situation into our practices, and moreimportantly, how does this changed situation retroact on ourunderstanding of the role of digital art, sound art and artisticpractice itself?

Rather than understanding algorithms as existing and transparent tools,the ALMAT Symposium is interested in their genealogical, processualaspects and their transformative potential. We seek critical approachesthat avoid both mystification and commodification, that aim at openingthe black box of "wonder" that is often presented to the public whenutilising algorithms.

The foundation for the symposium is given by the eponymous project ALMAT– Algorithms that Matter. ALMAT is an artistic research project byHanns Holger Rutz and David Pirrò funded by the Austrian Science Fund(FWF AR 403-GBL) and hosted by the Institute of Electronic Music andAcoustics (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

ALMAT 2020 will take place (06–07 July) adjoining the 8th Conference onComputation, Communication, Aesthetics & X – xCoAx (08–10 July). xCoAxis an exploration of the intersection where computational tools andmedia meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiryon aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor thatconnects them all. xCoAx has issued a separate call for participation –www.xcoax.org – and reduced combi-tickets areavailable for xCoAx + ALMAT.

Call for Contributions

The ALMAT Symposium calls for artistic research contributions in thefollowing two categories:

1. Contributions exploring the symposium's theme and the questions arising from it. This may include: - What are the material qualities specific of algorithms and algorithmic practices? How does the algorithmic become malleable as material? - Are there particular affordances of the algorithmic? - How does algorithmic agency unfold, how can it be observed, formulated, or communicated? Which alternatives to traditional concepts such as control/controller could be formulated? - How does the reconfigurative "intrinsic" or "speculative" movement of algorithms extend to or retroact on the artist or recipient, how does it shape their interactions? - How can artistic experimentation with algorithms be communicated to an audience, how may it help sensitise and empower people to take ownership of the algorithmic? - Which are the thresholds of heteronomy/autonomy, what makes an algorithmic practice become generative? - What are philosophical, technological, aesthetic or artistic consequences of acknowledging the agency of algorithms?

2. Contributions that explicitly refer to the research, the experiences and the case studies of the ALMAT research project. Contributions may be commentary, continuation, critique or, more in general, a response to one or more aesthetic and theoretic manifestations and artefacts reflected in the project's documentation. The project's (ongoing) documentation is an online hypertext starting at the Continuous Exposition:www.researchcatalogue.net/view/381565/381566 . In particular, we identified a number of works that are good candidates for responses, as they will be visible or audible during the symposium (see submission page).